Michigan State Coach Suzy Merchant

Michigan State Head Coach Suzy MerchantOn Nebraska’s big run “I think it was just a tale of two teams. I think they did to us what we did to them at our place. Frick and Frack. We didn’t play very well together in the first half. I thought we were taking too many jumpers. Settling for jumpers and not making them work defensively. Because of that, it allowed them to score a little bit in transition and things like that. It just got away from us. We started out well and then kind of went in the tank there and couldn’t recover.”

On if Nebraska and Michigan State are evenly matched “I don’t know. I guess so. They do certain things well. We do certain things well. Tonight what they did certainly was more effective than what we did. No question about it. It was just disappointing in that first half. I think they had one foul in 20 minutes of play. That was a little troublesome and we shot no free throws. I’ve never played in a game where we’ve had only one foul. That was a little difficult I thought. In the second half, we were trying to attack them a little more, which we did to get to the foul line a little more. Are they evenly matched? I mean not tonight. Not today.”

On Nebraska’s passing “Rachel Theriot is the best passer in the league. She had more assists than our entire team did today. She’s a great passer. I think it always kind of starts with her. (Emily) Cady does a nice job off that rail drive of finding people and people help and kicking and things like that she does a good job of that. Those are the two kids that I think add a little extra to their offense, because not only can they score the ball, rebound the ball, push the ball, shoot the ball, but they can create shots for other people.”

On the Big Ten race “I’m just going to go home and regroup. I don’t know. The league is tough. Onto the next one. It’s disappointing, but like I said, I’m sure they were disappointed in our place when we went up 20 or 25 or whatever on them. You just never know. You have to keep fighting, keep grinding, keep working. It’s a tough league top to bottom. We’re going to add to it next year. Two more games with Maryland and Rutgers coming into the league with an 18-game schedule. It’s not going to make things any easier. Predictions are going to be a little bit harder to make for sure.”

On aggressiveness in the first half “I thought there were a few times when we were aggressive and didn’t get the call. We were working a little bit at it. But we settled for some jumpers in that stretch for sure that we shouldn’t have. I do think there were opportunities where we maybe should’ve had the foul called. Whether it was a shooting foul or not, not necessarily. I’ve never been in a game where there was only one foul called in 20 minutes of play when you are playing in man. I’ll have to watch the film. It seemed like we were getting inside to the rim. Tori (Jankoska) had a couple drives. We had a couple offensive rebounds from the post move in there. There were a handful of things I thought could’ve gone our way that they didn’t call. In the second half, we were much more aggressive obviously and did a better job of trying to even it out a little bit and attacking.”